1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a photosensitive material processing apparatus and a photosensitive material processing method which withdraw photosensitive materials, such as films, from cartridges and process the withdrawn photosensitive materials.
2. Description of the Related Art
A film is loaded into a conventional film processor by adhering a leader film to the leading end of a film withdrawn from a cartridge in advance, and setting the leader film at a predetermined place.
The operation for removing the leading end of the film from the cartridge is complex, and mechanisms for automatically carrying out this operation have been proposed. However, these mechanisms are complicated and therefore expensive.
In an attempt to obtain a film processor which is both compact and exhibits good processing capabilities, usually two, or three, processing lines are provided in the film processor, and films pass through these plural processing lines. The processing capabilities can be improved even more by increasing the number of processing lines.
However, if mechanisms for automatically withdrawing the film leading ends are provided so as to correspond to the plural rows, the apparatus becomes extremely expensive. Therefore, mechanisms for automatically withdrawing film leading ends have not been able to be used at film processors equipped with a plurality of processing lines.